Never Die Villain

"Huh."

Ilya looked at his points.

The number displayed on his identification seal had grown considerably since the last time he bothered checking it, enough that even he had to stare at it for a few seconds to make sure he hadn’t misread anything.

He had spent most of the examination moving through the hunting field from above, picking off whatever magical beasts he could find before immediately searching for the next one, and apparently, those points had accumulated much faster than he realized.

[Total Points: 187]

"That’s... a lot."

He turned the seal in his hand, as though looking at the number from another angle might somehow make it smaller.

Between the Titanframe from earlier and the sheer number of Lesser and Common Beasts he had hunted afterward, his score had climbed far beyond what he had initially expected to achieve.

Ilya scratched his cheek.

"Am I first?"

There was no way to know.

The identification seals recorded their individual scores, but they didn’t display anyone else’s, which meant Ilya had no idea how well the other students were doing elsewhere in the hunting field.

For all he knew, someone had discovered an area filled with Elite Beasts and had been farming twenty-five points at a time since the examination began.

"Still..."

Ilya looked down from where the Whiteout carried him above the forest.

He had covered an absurd amount of ground.

Most students had to navigate the terrain normally, which meant cliffs, rivers, thick vegetation, and changes in elevation all slowed them down even before combat was taken into consideration.

Ilya had ignored nearly all of that by simply having the blizzard carry him over every obstacle in his path, and once he realized how easy it was to locate weaker beasts from above, he had stopped bothering with anything that would take too long to kill unless it was worth enough points to justify the effort.

It wasn’t complicated.

If a Lesser Beast was directly beneath him, he killed it.

If a Common Beast appeared nearby, he killed that too.

If something stronger required an actual fight, he decided whether the points were worth the time and mana before engaging it, and if they weren’t, he simply moved on and searched for something easier.

Apparently, doing that for several hours worked rather well.

"I should be pretty high up, at least."

First place was another question.

There were plenty of talented students among the first-years, and Ilya had no intention of assuming everyone else had been wandering around the forest accomplishing nothing while he gathered points.

Tristan Amaury de Bellacourt in particular came to mind, along with Elise, who might act like an idiot whenever she was around him but was still a Beaumont and had been practicing magic for most of her life.

Solveig was probably doing well too.

Knowing her, she had likely turned the entire examination into some kind of mathematical problem within the first twenty minutes.

Ilya glanced at the remaining time on his seal.

"Still plenty left."

Whether he was first or not didn’t really matter yet.

If there was still time on the clock, then standing around wondering about the rankings was just wasting time he could be using to make the number larger.

Ilya raised his head.

"Guess I’ll keep going."

Whoosh——!

It was then that several explosions erupted around him.

"Uh...?!"

Boom—boom—boom——!

The first blast missed him by several meters, but the second struck far closer, exploding against the blizzard carrying him through the air and throwing his body to the side.

Before Ilya could properly regain his balance, another explosive spell detonated directly beside him, disrupting the force keeping him aloft and sending him falling toward the forest below.

"What the hell?!"

Ilya twisted himself around as he fell, catching a glimpse of several spells rising from beneath the trees.

Another sphere of compressed flame shot past his shoulder before exploding overhead, and although the blast didn’t hit him directly, the shockwave pushed him downward even faster.

These weren’t magical beasts attacking him.

"...!"

They were spells.

Ilya barely had enough time to process that before the ground rushed toward him.

He forced the blizzard at the last second, slowing his descent enough to keep the landing from breaking anything, but he still crashed through several branches before hitting the forest floor hard enough to send dirt and dead leaves scattering around him.

"Ugh... fuck...!"

His side struck first, followed by his shoulder, and he rolled several times before finally stopping against the base of a tree.

Ilya remained there for a second before pushing himself upright, rubbing the side of his head while the ringing in his ears gradually faded.

Footsteps were already approaching.

"There!"

"Did we get him?"

"Looks like it!"

Several students emerged from between the trees, with more appearing from different directions shortly afterward.

Most had their catalysts drawn, and a few already had spells prepared, ready to fire again if Ilya tried to escape.

Judging by their expressions, none of them seemed particularly apologetic about having just blasted another student out of the sky.

One of the students near the front frowned.

"Wait..."

Another narrowed his eyes, taking a few steps closer as he finally got a proper look at the person they had just shot down. From a distance, with Ilya constantly moving above the trees, none of them had been able to make out much beyond a uniform and a figure traveling through the air.

Now they could see his face.

"...Belozersky?"

"What?"

"That’s Ilya Belozersky."

"The Knight Department guy?"

"Former Knight Department."

"I know that!"

The students stared at him in confusion, and the shouting quickly died down once they realized the person they had spent the last several minutes trying to knock out of the sky was Ilya Valentinovich Belozersky.

Ilya slowly got to his feet and brushed the dirt from his uniform.

"Okay."

He looked around at the students surrounding him, counting at least seven before giving up when he noticed even more movement between the trees.

"Which one of you guys shot me?"

Nobody answered. Then one of them tightened his grip around his catalyst and stepped forward.

"You’ve been taking everything."

Ilya blinked. "Huh?"

"The beasts!" another student snapped. "You’ve been flying around the entire field killing everything before anyone else can even reach them!"

A few voices immediately joined him.

"We spent ten minutes tracking a Common Beast, and you killed it from the fucking sky!"

"You did the same thing to us!"

"And us!"

Ilya’s expression slowly changed as he listened.

"Ah..."

So that was what this was about.

From his perspective, he had simply been using the most efficient method available to him.

From theirs, however, some bastard had been soaring over the hunting field for the past few hours, appearing out of nowhere, raining spells onto whatever beasts happened to be nearby, taking the points, and disappearing before anyone could even complain.

"...Would you believe me if I said I jumped really hard?"

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